"Love's Got A Line On You" by Scandal

1983 / #59

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

It's almost a matter of principle that we need to include more Scandal on this blog. Man, does Scandal ever rule!

I even saw them in concert a couple times more than 20 years after their heyday. Throughout each show, lead singer Patty Smyth was chewin' bubble gum! She didn't bubble. But she was chewin' bubble gum!

Here we're profiling another great Scandal single that sadly missed the top 40. I have to admit that the pop stations in Cincinnati actually made a good choice by playing this record despite its low chart peak. Along with hits by DeBarge and Kajagoogoo, I remember that this song would crop up during the summer before 5th grade when I took the infamous "Are you ready?" hearing test. I also had to take one of those tests where you arrange pieces of paper with drawings on them to form a story. What a waste of time those tests were.

Eventually, we buyed Scandal's self-titled EP that included the lost hit we're profiling today. Not only was the record full of great tracks, but I was also amused by the back cover of it. The back of the record jacket showed Patty dancing and making a funny face with her mouth open. During one of the concerts I attended, a fan had this record sleeve and was proudly holding it up and waving it around, with this picture visible.

For the most part, this blog deals with recordings, not concerts. I was a broadcaster. I was lucky ever to see Scandal in concert, because there weren't very many interesting acts that came to town. A lot of rockers avoided Cincinnati even before they saw how shabbily the Damn Yankees were treated. I do remember once around 1996 - about a decade before I saw Scandal - when I was woken up at about 3 PM when a family member called with the news that there was a concert coming to town by some act who might be fun to see. I was asleep at 3 PM because this was during the particularly crushing timeframe after the NKU disaster - an era that the media somehow thinks was some shimmering renaissance.

I am the warrior.